Course Catalog

St. Scholastica Academy provides rigorous core courses in Math, Science, English and Social Studies balanced with challenging electives in a variety of disciplines. The Academy’s courses are aligned with Common Core academic standards. Approved courses have undergone a review process ensuring their content meets or exceeds the standard(s) for the major shifts outlined in the Common Core standards for literacy. The course catalog serves as the official source of information on instructional courses offered at the Academy.

List of 8 items.

  • English

    The courses offered through the English department focus on reading, writing, vocabulary, grammar, and usage. The curriculum integrates all aspects of language arts through the study of various literary pieces. As such, the students read literary selections appropriate to each course, including supplemental novels. Students learn to evaluate literature critically by comparing and contrasting elements of good writing and by making and defending their judgments about literature. They also form value judgments as they analyze the merit of literary works as well as corresponding literary elements.

    Vocabulary acquisition occurs in context through the study of literature.  Writing is an integral part of every level of instruction. Students learn to write in all of the rhetorical modes. Creative writing is also encouraged through daily journals, quick writes, and performance assessments. The curriculum, however, emphasizes formal writing, particularly literary analysis. The students learn and apply their knowledge of proper grammar and usage through their writing.

    Beginning at the English I level, the English courses are offered as College Prep, Honors or AP (Junior/ Senior level only) and dual enrollment.
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  • Fine Arts

    St. Scholastica Academy recognizes that the arts are fundamental and vital to education, personal development, and the quality of life. A strong art component is part of a holistic educational approach that connects us with humanity and integrates the senses, emotions, and critical thinking. Art is a universal form of communication that touches us at a basic level, unlike any other form of communication. Before there was writing and schools, there was art, and it was an integral part of life. The arts are the physical and intellectual remains of past civilizations. Art is not only an end in itself but stimulates, develops, and promotes:
    • critical, creative, conceptual, abstract and imaginative thinking and problem solving
    • deductive reasoning
    • flexibility while broadening one's horizons
    • analysis, interpretation, criticism, evaluation, and questioning
    • a striving for excellence, self-esteem, self-motivation, and self-discipline.
    St. Scholastica Academy continues to be committed to a strong discipline-based art program. All Studio classes exhibit their work during the Covington Coordinated Art Opening in the fall and spring, as well as the Catholic Schools Week displays in the New Orleans area.
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  • Foreign Language

    St. Scholastica Academy students begin foreign language classes in their freshmen year. Students taking one or more honors courses are required to take Latin I.  Honors students may opt to satisfy their foreign language requirements by taking Latin II in their sophomore year or they may opt to pursue Spanish I and II.  Honors students are strongly encouraged to take a third consecutive level of a foreign language as many out-of-state colleges strongly recommend a third level.

    The main purpose of the Foreign Language Program is to develop competency in the chosen language. Speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills are stressed. 

    Students must learn to perform a variety of language functions: to listen, to ask questions, to describe, to give and follow directions, to narrate, to express and defend opinions, and to hypothesize. Foreign language courses are designed to give students an exposure to a language and culture different from their own.

    First level courses of the chosen language introduce the students to the language through reading, writing, listening, and speaking.
    Second level courses introduce more complicated concepts and structures as well as vocabulary. Speaking in the language is stressed. The cultures of the native countries are studied.

    Third level courses include extensive reading and writing in the language, and as much conversation as possible.  Students are introduced to famous literature and cinema from native countries.
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  • Health & Physical Education

    The Health and Physical Education program is designed to give the students varied opportunities to learn the need for lifelong skills in health and physical exercise. This is accomplished through physical fitness training, knowledge of health maintenance, good nutrition, and through the skills and values fostered in competitive sports, activities, and games.

    A variety of programs in the department allows students the opportunity to develop a good work ethic, self-discipline, an ability to seek and work toward group and individual goals, and an ability to handle success and failure. The Eighth Grade course offers an etiquette class as a part of the curriculum. 

    All classes are taught stretching techniques, cardiorespiratory exercises, plyometric and endurance drills, as well as personal wellness. Each year students are taught lifetime skills and sports including bowling, jogging,fitness training, jumping rope, shuffleboard, volleyball, handball, soccer, basketball, recreational games and floor hockey.

    Health projects on each grade level promote an understanding of issues which affect young women today. Eighth grade health topics include: physical components of physical fitness. Freshman health components include such topics as fitness and CPR. Sophomore and Senior health topics include: food, nutrition, diet, eating disorders, heart related topics and fitness.
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  • Mathematics

    The math curriculum follows the Louisiana State University College Readiness program providing students with a seamless curriculum from Algebra to Differential and Integral Calculus. The math department is committed to meeting the needs of each individual student and challenging her to reach her highest potential in mathematics.  There is also a commitment to create an environment where students learn to value mathematics, communicate mathematically, engage in effective problem-solving and critical thinking, work in cooperative groups and become effective users of technology.  The department strives to include activities that will appeal to a variety of learning styles.  Confidence in mathematics is a frequent result and math anxiety is lessened.

    SSA students take math every year.   Honors level courses are offered to qualified students. Computers are utilized in the math classroom to assist in problem-solving and conceptual understanding.   

    SSA utilizes Louisiana State University’s college readiness curriculum which is available through Pearson’s MML (MyMathLab).  All homework assignments and quizzes are completed online in an effort to ensure individual understanding.  The curriculum is designed to optimize student preparedness for the math section on national standardized tests, particularly ACT and SAT.
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  • Science

    The acquisition of scientific knowledge proceeds through the assimilation of domain-specific (e.g. biology, chemistry) knowledge into categories, concepts, rules, or principles that are then used to interpret situations. Students are trained to advance hypothetical solutions (propositions) and to test and examine conditions, define problems, collect and organize data, and propose solutions. Students evaluate the results of their scientific examination by measuring them against hypothetical solutions. These procedures are applied in experimentation and research projects that allow the students to discover rules and principles specific to their branch of science and to create analyses based on data.  Each science course is strategically aligned with a math course so that students interpret science coursework as a true application of mathematics.  Data interpretation and analysis is integrated throughout each course to assist in preparing students for the ACT assessment.
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  • Social Studies

    The Social Studies curriculum provides insight into the relevance of the past to the modern world. Students develop an appreciation of our multicultural interdependence, our democratic society, and the world as a whole. Students are encouraged to take an active role in the community and the world at large by being well-informed and capable of making objective decisions based on the use of critical thinking skills.
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  • Theology

    SSA’s charism is the legacy of the Benedictine Sisters who founded the school in 1903. The sisters gifted the school with a legacy of prayer, work, study and community. This charism permeates everything in the life of the school, especially in the Theology department. The Theology and campus ministry programs work symbiotically to consider the whole student in her spiritual (prayer), intellectual (study), human (community) and apostolic (work) formation. (Pastores Dabo Vobis 42) Our explicit aim is to form disciples of Jesus Christ.

    The Theology department curriculum flows from the United States Bishops’ Framework whose design is centered on the person and mission of Jesus Christ. The bishops, in implementing this curriculum, echo the words of St. John Paul II who reminds us that the aim of religious formation is to put students, "not only in touch, but in intimacy, communion, with Jesus Christ.” (Catechesi Tradendae 5)Our particular approach to this curriculum is theological. Simply put, "Theology is faith seeking understanding.” (St. Anselm) The students are taught, in a rigorous academic discipline, to examine the content of the Faith with reason and experience. We consider that Theology demands a relevant cross curricular understanding of culture, arts and sciences in order to bring alive the content of our Catholic Faith in the mind and heart of the student. All St. Scholastica students take a Theology course each year.

    As an integral part of overall formation the Theology department and other members of the campus ministry team provide opportunities for the students’ participation in the life of the Church beyond the classroom. In retreats, school Masses, rosary, liturgy of the hours, Eucharistic Adoration, regional and national youth ministry events, and in elective studies students are invited to grow as disciples of Jesus Christ. All are also required to participate in a class retreat day and complete service hours as part of their theology credit as well. These experiences bring alive an encounter with Christ and embrace the mission He gives to all. The mission of service is realized through the school’s service program,, drives, mission trips, and other initiatives.

    The Church’s mission of proclaiming the message of the Gospel, creating a community of disciples, and being of service to one another is consciously fostered at St. Scholastica Academy through the guidance of those primarily charged with the students’ spiritual formation and through the lived Christian values of the faculty and staff.
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St. Scholastica Academy is a Catholic, all-girls, college-preparatory high school located in Covington, Louisiana. Founded in 1903, SSA perpetuates the Benedictine tradition of balancing prayer, work, study, and community in developing adolescent girls into Christian women grounded in the Gospel values of the Catholic faith. St. Scholastica Academy is a Catholic girls high school of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. As such it admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin to all the rights, privileges, programs, and activities available to students at its schools. It does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national and ethnic origin in administration of educational policies, admissions policies, scholarship and loan programs, or athletic and other school-administered programs.

St. Scholastica Academy

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